On Freedom

First of all, in discussing any subject of this kind, we must obviously be earnest and not academic, scholarly, or superficial because that will not lead us anywhere. So, we have to be very serious, and that means we cannot merely accept or reject, but must investigate to find out the truth of any subject. One must be attentive and not academic. One must be open to suggestion, and therefore one must have a desire to investigate and not merely accept the authority, either of the platform or of a book, of the dead past or of the present. So, in discussing what is the purpose of life, we have to find out what we mean by ''life'' and what we mean by ''purpose''not merely the dictionary meaning, but the significance we give to those words. Surely, life implies everyday action, everyday thought, everyday feeling, does it not? It implies the struggles, the pains, the anxieties, the deceptions, the worries, the routine of the office, of business, of bureaucracy, and so on. All that is life, is it not? By life we mean, not just one department or one layer of consciousness, but the total process of existence which is our relationship to things, to people, to ideas. That is what we mean by life - not an abstract thing.

So, to find out what is true, or what is the purpose of life, or to discover the truth of reincarnation or of any human problem, the inquirer who is demanding truth, who wants to know truth, must be very clear as regards his intentions. If his intentions are to seek security, comfort, then obviously he does not want truth because truth may be one of the most devastating, discomforting things. The man who is seeking comfort does not want truth; he only wants security, safety, a refuge in which he will not be disturbed. But a man who is seeking truth must invite disturbances, tribulations because it is only in moments of crisis that there is alertness, watchfulness, action. Then only that which is is discovered and understood.

Sir, most of us are in a crisis - about the war, about a job, about our wives running away with somebody. We have crises about us and in us all the time, whether we admit it or not, and is that not the moment to inquire, rather than to wait until the ultimate moment when the bomb is thrown? Because, though we may deny it, we are in a crisis from moment to moment, politically, psychologically, economically. There is intense pressure all the time, and is this not the moment to find out? Are we not in this moment? If you say, ''I have no crisis, I am only sitting back and looking at life,'' that is merely avoiding the issue, isn't it? Is any one of us in that position? Surely, that is not true of any person. We have crises one after another, but we have become dull, secure, indifferent; and our difficulty is, is it not, that we do not know how to meet crises? Are we to meet them with anxiety, or to inquire and so find the truth of the matter? Most of us meet a crisis with anxiety; growing weary, we say, ''Will you please solve this problem?'' When we talk, we are looking for an answer and not for the understanding of the problem. Similarly, in discussing the question of reincarnation, the problem of whether there is or is not continuity, what we mean by continuity, what we mean by death - to understand such a problem, the problem of continuity or no continuity, we must not seek an answer away from the problem. We must understand the problem itself - which we will discuss at another meeting because our time is nearly up.

My point is that there must be self-confidence - and I have sufficiently explained what I mean by self-confidence. It is not the confidence that you have through technical capacity, technical knowledge, technical training. The confidence that comes with self-knowledge is entirely different from the confidence of aggressiveness and of technical skill, and that confidence born of self-knowledge is essential to clear up the confusion in which we live. Obviously, you cannot have this self-knowledge given to you by another because what is given to you by another is mere technique. That creative confidence in which there is the joy of discovering, the bliss of understanding, can come only when I understand myself, the whole total process of myself, and to understand oneself is not such a very complex business, one can begin at any level of consciousness. But, as I said last Sunday, to have that confidence there must be the intention to know oneself. Then I am not easily persuaded - I want to know everything about myself, and so I am open to all the intimations concerning me, whether they come from another or from within myself. I am open to the conscious and the unconscious within me, open to every thought and feeling that is constantly moving, urging, arising and fading away in myself. Surely, that is the way to have this confidence - to know oneself completely, whatever one is, and not pursue an ideal of what one should be or assume that one is this or that, which is really absurd. It is absurd because then you are merely accepting a preconceived idea, whether your own or another's, of what you are or would like to be. But to understand yourself as you are, you must be voluntarily open, spontaneously vulnerable to all the intimations of yourself; and as you begin to understand the flow, the movement, the swiftness of your own mind, you will see that confidence comes from the understanding. It is not the aggressive, brutal, assertive confidence, but the confidence of knowing what is taking place in oneself. Surely, without that confidence, you cannot dispel confusion, and without dispelling the confusion within you and about you, how can you possibly find the truth of any relationship?

Are we seeking the truth about reincarnation, or are we seeking reincarnation out of anxiety?

Krishnamurti: All right. I am not answering your question for the moment. We are discussing it generally. Does our approach lie through anxiety, through fear, or, without being afraid, do we want to know? Because, the results of our inquiry will be different in each case. As has been pointed out by one of you, either I am anxious to know, and therefore my anxiety is going to color what is, or, I want to know without fear, I want to know the truth about continuity, independent of my likes and dislikes, fears and anxieties. I want to know what is. Now, most of us are a mixture of both, are we not? When my son dies, I am anxious, I am burning with pain, with loneliness, and I want to know. Then my inquiries are based on anxiety. But sitting and discussing in this hall and casually saying, ''Well, I would like to know,'' when there is no crisis - can such a mind know? Surely, you can find truth only in a crisis and not away from the crisis. It is then that you will have to inquire, not when you casually say, ''Let us discuss whether there is truth or not.'' Is that not so? When my son dies, I want to know, not whether he lives, but the truth about continuity, which means that I am willing to understand the subject. Does it not imply that? I have lost my son, and I want to know what makes me suffer and if there is an end to suffering. So, it is in that moment of crisis alone, when there is pressure, that I will find the truth, if I want to know the truth. But in the moment of crisis, in the moment of pressure, we want comfort, we want alleviation, we want to put our head on somebody's lap; in moments of anxiety we want to be lulled to sleep. And I say, on the contrary, the moment of anxiety is the right moment to inquire and to find the truth. When I want comfort in the moment of crisis, I am not inquiring. Therefore, I must know the state of my own being, of my psychological or spiritual being, I must know the state I am in before I can inquire and find out what truth is.

Now, if I ask about reincarnation because I am anxious, surely that anxiety comes into being because I am afraid of death, of coming to an end, of not fulfilling myself, of not seeing my friends, of not finishing my book, and all the rest of it. That is, my inquiry is based on fear; therefore, fear will dictate the answer, fear will determine what truth shall be. But if I am not afraid and am seeking the truth of what is, then reincarnation has a different meaning. So, inwardly, psychologically, we must be very clear what it is that we are seeking.

Krishnamurti: I am not saying you are superficial, but surely, we must know if we are merely discussing out of curiosity. If we are, it will lead us in one direction, and if we are discussing to find out the truth, then it will lead us in another direction. Which is it? As I said right from the beginning this evening, if we are merely discussing as a club for intellectual amusement, then I am afraid I shall not partake in it because that is not my intention, but if we are seeking to find out the truth of anything, that is, the truth of our relationship, then let us discuss.

Questioner: It is very rare that somebody asks about reincarnation just to know the truth.

Questioner: I can honestly tell you that I am neither in favor of this nor of that. I want to know the truth. The Questioner arose in me when we were discussing the subject.

Questioner: It is obvious that if you are seeking truth out of anxiety, you are prejudiced in favor of a certain answer which will relieve you of that anxiety, and therefore you cannot find the truth.

Questioner: I seek out the anxiety to know the truth.

Questioner: We desire to know the truth.

Krishnamurti: Therefore you are not seeking truth. You are not passive.

Krishnamurti: Of course, you want to know if there is reincarnation, if reincarnation is a fact, but you don't want to know the truth of it; and I want to know the truth of reincarnation, not the fact. It may or may not be a fact. I do not know if the distinction is clear.

Questioner: When we asked the Questioner about reincarnation, we wanted to be reassured that there is reincarnation, we did not want to know about truth and all that.

Questioner: When we ask the Questioner about reincarnation, it is in order to be assured that there is reincarnation. In other words, we put the Questioner in a state of anxiety that there should be reincarnation, and being anxious, we listen with a biased mind. We do not want to find out the real truth of it; we only want to be assured that there is such a thing as reincarnation.

Questioner: Do you want to know whether there is such a thing as reincarnation, or do you want to know the truth? Are you anxious that there should be reincarnation, or are you seeking to find out the truth, whatever it is?

Krishnamurti: Now wait a minute. Before we inquire how to free the mind from its own conditioning, which creates confusion, let us try to find out how to discover the truth of anything - not of technical things, but the truth of ourselves in relation to something, even in relation to the atomic bomb. You understand the problem, sir? We are not self-confident, there is no confidence in us, that creative thing which gives sustenance, life, vitality, understanding. We have lost it, or we have never had it, and because we do not know how to judge anything, we have been led here and pushed there, beaten up driven - politically, religiously, and socially. We don't know, but it is difficult to say we don't know. Most of us think we do, but actually we know very little except in technical matters - how to run a government, a machine, or how to kick the servant or wife or children, or whatever it is. But we do not know ourselves, we have lost that capacity. I am using the word lost, but that is probably the wrong word because we have never had it. Since we do not know ourselves and yet we want to find out what truth is, how are we going to find it? Do you understand the question, sir? I am afraid not.

Someone wanted to discuss reincarnation. Now, I want to know the truth of reincarnation, not what the Bhagavad-Gita, Christ, or my pet guru has said. I want to know the truth of that matter. Therefore, what am I to do to know the truth of it? What is the first requirement? I must not be eager to accept it, must I? I must not be persuaded by the clever arguments or by the personality of another, which means I am not easily satisfied by the reassuring comfort which reincarnation gives. Must I not be in that position? That is, I am not seeking comfort; I am trying to find out what is true. Are you in that position? Surely, when you are seeking comfort, you can be persuaded by anyone, and therefore you lose self-confidence; but when you do not seek comfort but want to know the truth, when you are completely free from the desire to take refuge, then you will experience truth, and that experience will give you confidence. So, that is the first requirement, is it not? To know the truth of anything psychologically, you cannot seek comfort because the moment you want comfort, security, a haven in which you are protected, you will have what you want, but what you have will not be the truth. Therefore, you will be persuaded by another who offers a greater comfort, a greater security, a better refuge, and so you are driven from port to port, and that is why you have lost confidence. You have no confidence because you have been driven from one refuge to another by your own desire to be comfortable, to be secure. So, a man who would seek the truth in relationship must be free of the destructive and limiting desire to be comfortable, to be secure. This fear of losing oneself psychologically must go. Only then can you find the truth of reincarnation or of anything else - because you are seeking truth and not security. Then truth will reveal to you what is right, and therefore you will have confidence. Sir, is it not more important to find out the truth than to believe that there is or is not continuity?

Questioner: You cannot do both. Either you want to know the truth about reincarnation, or you want to be assured that there is reincarnation. Which is the case?

So, having made life into a technical process, conforming to a particular pattern of action, which is merely technique, naturally we have lost confidence in ourselves, and therefore we are increasing our inward struggle, our inward pain and confusion. Confusion can be dissolved only through self-confidence, and this confidence cannot be gained through another. You have to undertake, for yourself and by yourself, the journey of discovery into the process of yourself in order to understand it. This does not mean you are withdrawn, aloof. On the contrary, sirs, confidence comes the moment you understand, not what others say, but your own thoughts and feelings, what is happening in yourself and around you. Without that confidence which come from knowing your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences - their truth, their falseness, their significance, their absurdity - without knowing that, how can you clear up the whole field of confusion which is yourself?

Krishnamurti: For the moment we are not discussing how to dissipate confusion. Having lost self-confidence, our problem is how to get it back - if we ever had it at all. Because, obviously, without that element of confidence we shall be led astray by every person we come across - and that is exactly what is happening. What is right purpose politically, and how are you to know it? Should you not know it? Should you not know what is true in it? Similarly, must you not know what is true in the babble of tongues of religion? And how are you going to find out what is true among all the innumerable sayings - Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and so on? In this frightful confusion, how are you going to find out? To find out, you must obviously be in a great strait, you must be burning to know what you are in yourself. Are you in such a position? Are you burning to find out the truth of anything, whether of communism, fascism, or capitalism? To find out what is true in the various political actions, in the religious assertions and experiences which you so easily accept - to find out the truth of all these things, must you not be burning with the desire to know the truth? Therefore, never accept any authority. Sir, after all, acceptance of authority indicates that the mind wants comfort security. A mind that seeks security, either with a guru or in a party, political or any other, a mind that is seeking safety, comfort can never find truth, even in the smallest things of our existence. So, a man who wants this creative self-confidence must obviously be burning with the desire to know the truth of everything, not about empires or the atomic bomb, which is merely a technical matter, but in our human relationships, our relationship with others, and our relationship to property and to ideas. If I want to know the truth, I begin to inquire, and before I can know the truth of anything, I must have confidence. To have confidence, I must inquire into myself and remove those causes that prevent each experience from giving its full significance.

So, is it not important to find out why we are confused? Can anybody, except a very few, say that they are not confused politically, religiously, economically? Sits, you have only to look around you. Every newspaper is shouting in confusion, reflecting the uncertainties, the pains, the anxieties, the impending wars; and the sane, thoughtful person, the earnest person who is trying to find a way out of this confusion surely has first to tackle himself. So then, our question is this, What causes confusion? Why are we confused? One of the obvious factors is that we have lost confidence in ourselves, and that is why we have so many leaders, so many gurus, so many holy books telling us what to do and what not to do. We have lost self-confidence. Obviously, there are people, the technicians, who are full of confidence because they have achieved results. For example, give a first class mechanic any machine and he will understand it. The more technique we have, the more capable we are of dealing with technical things, but surely, that is not self-confidence. We are not using the word confidence as it applies to technical matters. A professor, when he deals with his subject, is full of confidence - at least, when other professors are not listening - or a bureaucrat, a high official, feels confident because he has reached the top of the ladder in the technique of bureaucracy, and he can always exert his authority. Though he may be wrong, he is full of confidence - like a mechanic when you give him a motor he knows all about. But surely, we do not mean that kind of confidence, do we, because we are not technical machines. We are not mere machines ticking according to a certain rhythm, revolving at a certain speed, a certain number of revolutions per minute. We are life, not machines. We would like to make ourselves into machines because then we could deal with ourselves mechanically, repetitiously, and automatically - and that is what most of us want. Therefore, we build walls of resistance, disciplines, controls, tracks along which we run. But even having so conditioned, so placed ourselves, having become so automatic and mechanical, there is still a vitality that pursues different things and creates contradictions. Sirs, our difficulty is that we are pliable, that we are alive, not dead; and because life is so swift, so subtle, so uncertain, we do not know how to understand it, and therefore we have lost confidence. Most of us are trained technically because we have to earn our livelihood, and modern civilization demands higher and higher technique. But with that technical mind, that technical capacity, you cannot follow yourself because you are much too swift, you are more pliable, more complicated than the machine, so you are learning to have more and more confidence in the machine and are losing confidence in yourself and are therefore multiplying leaders. So, as I said, one of the causes of confusion is this lack of confidence in ourselves. The more imitative we are, the less confidence we have, and we have made life into a copy book. From early childhood up, we are told what to do - we must do this, we must not do that. So what do you expect? And must you not have confidence in order to find out? Must you not have that extraordinary inward certainty to know what truth is when you meet it?

Now, when we discuss the purpose of life, we see that we mean by life the extraordinarily complex state of interrelationship without which there would be no life. And if we do not understand the full significance of that life, its varieties, impressions, and so on, what is the good of inquiring about the purpose of life? If I do not understand my relationship with you, my relationship with property and ideas, how can I go further? After all, sir, to find truth or God, or what you will, I must first understand my existence, I must understand the life around me and in me; otherwise, the search for reality becomes merely an escape from everyday action, and as most of us do not understand everyday action, as for most of us life is drudgery, pain, suffering, anxiety, we say,''For God's sake, tell us how to escape from it.'' That is what most of us want - a drug to put us to sleep so that we don't feel the aches and pains of life. Have I answered your question about the purpose of life?

So, what we are trying to discuss and find out is whether life has a purpose, and whether that purpose can be measured. It can only be measured in terms of the known, in terms of the past; and when I measure the purpose of life in terms of the known, I will measure it according to my likes and dislikes. Therefore, the purpose will be conditioned by my desires, and therefore it ceases to be the purpose. Surely, that is clear, is it not? I can understand what is the purpose of life only through the screen of my own prejudices, wants, and desires - otherwise I cannot judge, can I? So, the measure, the tape, the yardstick, is a conditioning of my mind, and according to the dictates of my conditioning, I will decide what the purpose is. But is that the purpose of life? It is created by my want, and therefore it is surely not the purpose of life. To find out the purpose of life, the mind must be free of measurement; then only can it find out - otherwise, you are merely projecting your own want. This is not mere intellection, and if you go into it deeply, you will see its significance. After all, it is according to my prejudice, to my want, to my desire, to my predilection, that I decide what the purpose of life is to be. So, my desire creates the purpose. Surely, that is not the purpose of life. Which is more important - to find out the purpose of life, or to free the mind itself from its own conditioning and then inquire? And perhaps when the mind is free from its own conditioning, that very freedom itself is the purpose. Because, after all, it is only in freedom that one can discover any truth.